The South

Hard to believe that January has already come and gone. We started out the month in Florida and spent a number of weeks exploring the state - from St. Augustine to Hobe Sound to Marathon to Orlando. We spent a

day in Miami and another day in Key West. We went to a state park to see dozens of manatees. We took an airboat ride through the Everglades and saw alligators as well as unique and unusual flora and fauna. We rode a mine cart into the caves below Gringott’s Wizarding Bank at Universal Studios. We tasted Key Lime pie and ate fish that we caught in the Atlantic ocean off of the keys. And we said hello to the New Year while watching fireworks at a party down by the beach.

In short, it’s been quite a month!

You might think that when we embarked on this year-long trip, an adventure that we had discussed off-and-on for a number of years, a journey that we had planned more intensely during the months leading up to it, you might think that we had everything planned out. Well, you’d be wrong. During our drive from Orlando to Carrabelle Beach, in the Florida Panhandle, Sonya and I discussed going up to Memphis, Tennessee.

I was keen on seeing Graceland and we had never been so close but it would still add about 8 hours of additional driving. Furthermore, we had already booked six nights at Carrabelle Beach and booked out next stop, New Orleans. However, after arriving at the campground in Carrabelle Beach, our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to change our schedule so that we could see what Graceland was all about. As you might imagine, if you know the song, Paul Simon’s Graceland was going through my head the whole time.

Almost all of our travel days has consisted of a drive that is anywhere from 3 hours to 6 hours long. For us, a 4 hour drive takes close to 6 hours, with rest stops and re-fueling and getting lost (thankfully, we have not taken that many wrong turns but it happens). The prospect of an 8-hour drive from Carrabelle beach to Memphis, which would likely take us about 11 hours, was a daunting one. So, I started to look at a mid-point stop. Halfway between these two places is Birmingham, Alabama. I had heard of Birmingham but mainly from the John Cougar Mellencamp song (When Jesus Left Birmingham) and also from that line in Sweet Home Alabama (In Birmingham they love the governor). Apparently, a good part of my education comes from songs.

STATUE DEPICTING CHILDREN ARRESTED FOR PROTESTING.

We stopped at Birmingham and visited the Civil Rights museum as well as the park where Martin Luther King and other leaders of the movement had stood and where peaceful protests had been staged. “Peaceful” in that the protestors had been against violence. But these protests had been anything but peaceful. The authorities had turned fire hoses on the protestors, had unleashed dogs at them, and had arrested them by the hundreds. White supremacists had used violent means like bombings, beatings, lynchings, and hangings. It is hard to describe the feeling of standing on those grounds, where history had been made and where man’s inhumanity to man had been laid out for the world to see. But, also, where oppressed men, women, and children had stood up for themselves and shone, as rays of sunlight for the world to see. Undoubtedly, much good came out of the turmoil and it brought about an end to government-sanctioned discrimination and segregation. Unfortunately, from what I saw, Birmingham is still very much a segregated city. It’s not enforced by law but, I imagine, followed by choice. The inner city is largely black, with more and more white people having moved to surburbia over the past few decades. Even though we were outside in the park for only an hour or so, we met a few people and those meetings lead me to conclude that there are real problems in Birmingham. They were nice people, very friendly, but with substance abuse challenges. Our visit to the extremely fancy (and somewhat expensive) Whole Foods store in the Birmingham suburbs later in the day had me wondering if the challenges facing Birmingham have more to do with the gap between rich and poor rather than the vestiges of a 250 year-old race issue. Probably a combination of both.

Graceland was an entirely different experience but it too felt like opening a window into 1950’s and 60’s. My Mom and Dad have always been Elvis fans. Growing up, I heard a lot of The King’s music and my parents had many of Elvis’ records that they kept in a huge piece of furniture that was part sound system, part bar, and part fireplace. This thing probably weighed about l,000 pounds. It had a record player in a cabinet on one side, a bar in a cabinet on the other - complete with lights and red velvet coverings. Below these cabinets were two other cabinets for holding records and between those, in the center of the unit, was an electric fireplace. The fireplace had a plastic cylinder with a black and white pattern that would rotate and was lit from within to give the impression of a crackling fire.

I grew up with the music and knew that Elvis had been a big success but I did not realize just how successful and how impactful he had been until we visited Graceland. You might say that he was an overnight success - going from obscurity to a superstar within a year. However, this was really accomplished with a huge amount of time and effort. When he started out, he was performing up to 4 shows a day, criss-crossing the countryside. He performed at state fairs, sometimes off the back of a truck. He was definitely getting his 10,000 hours (see Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers if you want to learn more about this reference). His timing could not have been better. Rock ’n Roll was ready to hit the mainstream and TVs were being bought for every house in America. His TV appearances sealed the deal and made him a household name. More Americans tuned in for his Hawaii concert (the first event to be broadcast internationally to 40 countries) than for the first Moon landing. Then there were the movies.

He appeared in 31 movies over 13 years. Some of them were pretty bad but each and every one of them turned a profit. He was not just The King but a real-life King Midas - everything Elvis touched turned to gold.

Something that I did not know and found interesting and inspiring is that Elvis was quite the philanthropist. He supported a number of causes and threw a number of benefits. He was also known for random acts of charity - he would meet some stranger that was down on their luck and just write them a cheque or, in some cases, buy them a car. Unfortunately, for him and his family, he was also horrible at financial management. At the time of his death, there was not much money left in his estate.

We got to tour the mansion and the grounds. The house itself was not a large as I would have imagined but the decor was outrageous. It was still decorated in the 60’s and 70’s styles but keep in mind that it was decorated by someone who liked flashy jumpsuits covered in sequins and for whom money was not a worry. Mirrors all over and shag carpet on the walls and ceiling. We saw Elvis’ two planes, which were just as wildly decorated. Gold plating on the taps in the bathrooms. TVs and speakers in the various rooms on the planes (yes, they had different rooms). And we saw his impressive car collection.

We left Memphis a day early - another last-minute change in plans. This time the change was caused by weather. The forecast was predicting thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. So, we cut out early to escape the

weather. On the day of our departure, Sonya and I took a trip into Memphis (Graceland is actually on the outskirts and would have been in the countryside when Elvis bought it). We had heard that Beale Street was somewhat famous so we drove downtown to have a look. It reminded us of George Street in St John’s Newfoundland. A couple of city blocks are blocked off for vehicular traffic and are lined with a dense collection of bars, pubs, and restaurants. It is famous for it’s blues and rock ’n roll and has a BB King’s club. There is a huge Gibson’s Guitar store a block away as well as the arena where the Memphis Grizzlies (formerly the Vancouver Grizzlies of the NBA) play. Other than that, from the little of downtown that we drove through, Memphis looks a fair bit run down. However, there was a nice looking park along the Mississippi river, that runs on the edge of the downtown area.

January has come and gone and, for us, so has our time in Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. We drove the length of Mississippi on our way to Louisiana but other than a few rest stops we did not leave the interstate so we did not really see much of Mississippi. From what we did see, the state has a lot of trees and marshes. Now that February is upon us, we have New Orleans to explore and we will be seeing Texas and New Mexico.

The adventure continues…